Wednesday, September 19, 2007

I watch the worst movies. Well, not the worst... but such junk. Another dumb personal philosophy -- watch the crap now, save the best for last... assuming I'll live long enough to still be able to watch what I'm skipping now. It's really amazing, my first major in college was film, I wanted to be the next Scorcese or Francis Ford Coppola. I love great films, I love movies in general. I've seen a ton of movies but if I walk into the local video store, I've seen next to nothing from the past ten years. So basically what I'm doin' is spending most of my movie watching time with nonsense like this...

Neil Simon's London Suite

Made-for-TV

1996

Four separate stories take place at the Grosvenor House hotel overlooking London's Hyde Park.

Debra Dolby (Julia Louis-Dreyfus a.k.a. Elaine on Seinfeld) is a newlywed on her honeymoon from America, only she's missing her husband who she got into a fight with on the plane ride to Europe. Debra has a terrible time wondering where the heck her groom is.

Mark and Anne (Michael Richards a.ka. Kramer on Seinfeld and Julie Hagerty) are on a Wimbledon vacation but Mark's back goes and they lose the tickets to the tennis match and all sorts of problems ensue.

Diana (Patricia Clarkson) is a British actress back in London for the first time in eight years. Tagging along is her faithful personal assistant, Grace (Kristen Johnston a.k.a. Sally on 3rd Rock From The Sun). Diana's meeting up with her ex-husband, now living as a gay man, Sidney (Kelsey Grammer a.k.a. Frasier Crane.)

Sharon (Madeline Kahn) is on vacation with her daughter who sets mom up with a Scottish fellow that they met on the plane (Richard Mulligan.)

Elaine and Kramer both did great as did Madeline Kahn. Comic genius from each of them. They were a pleasure to watch and probably, if you're a Seinfeld fan, make this worth watching. Julie Haggerty wasn't bad either, also pretty good with comedy just as she was all those years before in the film classic Airplane. One more great performance was from the hotel front desk reception dude. Perfectly played, old chap! Some others here seemed to force their parts and/or just didn't add anything extra special to the mix. Patricia Clarkson and Kelsey Grammer, both playing Brits, just didn't seem natural. And if Sidney was a Brit, he wouldn't have called football soccer. Soccer in Europe? No. So that's one example of poor writing that semi-plagued this TV adaption of Neil Simon's broadway play. And none of the stories came together in any way. Often movies like this have each story somehow coming together in the end. Nope. It was nice to see a little bit of London but a thousand movies do that better. On a positive note, each story moved along at a nice pace and was able to keep my interest throughout.